Goals Setting for Success in Life (1)

Leveraging over four decades of cross domain experience for contributing to the growth and well-being of our network community members. Rajiv Tewari

Step 1: Components of Goals

Easiest to understand are the financial goals but then let’s try to answer some questions before setting our goals:

1. What will be the consequences of not having enough materialistic wealth on the quality of our life?
2. In the absence of health can we enjoy the materialistic wealth?
3. How will we feel, if we had lots of materialistic wealth and did not have happiness which comes from sharing love and affection with our near and dear ones?
4. What would be the consequences of breaking the laws of the almighty? Should we therefore have some spiritual goals or values which are respected universally?
5. In the absence of intellectual wealth will we be able to go far in a world which is changing at a rapid pace?

For real success, we need to be conscious of all forms of wealth while setting the goals of our life.? A perfect balance may not be possible, but we need to understand that neither happiness nor long term success would be possible in the absence of one of the components of wealth. The combo of materialistic wealth, wealth of health, emotional wealth, intellectual wealth and spiritual wealth (values) will yield better results.? For the ease of our understanding, I call this combo True Wealth.

The concept of spiritual wealth or universal values gets mixed up with religion so this needs to be explained with some examples.? What changes from society to society cannot be a universal value. For example, A Chinese for example may have no hesitation in eating a dog but this would be a strict no no for a Hindu.? The fact that a Chinese Mother will love her child as much as a Hindu Mother will not change from society to society, so this is a good example of universal value.

With so much news about corrupt people in places of power, one can easily get confused when it comes to personal values. This is a grey area and my advice is to follow the wisdom of generational wisdom so well explained through the karmic theory in Geeta by Lord Krishna.

It’s better to write your goals in text and support it with photos and drawings of your dream life to plant a powerful image in your brain. This is called visioning in the corporate world.

Step 2: Clearing the doubts

1. Is it really so simple to set realistic goals?
2. How would I know if my goals are achievable?

We usually believe that we can achieve or do something when we see others with similar backgrounds doing or achieving it. So it’s important to find out such people through Google search or by looking around in our neighbourhood. Reading their stories or having a conversation with such persons can easily strengthen the belief that you too can do it.? There is an old saying that learning from other’s mistakes is always a better choice.? If someone with a similar background and similar or greater challenges can achieve it then it should be possible for you also provided you are committed to your own goal and are willing to take action.

To know whether your goals are achievable or not, the only way is to start taking action. Testing your concepts and skills is critical. Very few succeed in their first attempt so be prepared to learn from your failures. A simple Google search will show that there is no successfully living person on this earth who did not face adversities and failures before achieving success. Usually the bigger the successes the bigger are the initial failures.

How to proceed further: Once the goals are clear then HOW emerges gradually. Our brain begins to collect relevant information once the goals are clear to us. The how part, as already mentioned above may have several pitfalls and failures and may bring in opportunities which we may not have even imagined. So fixing the how and being rigid about it may not work.

We can learn a lot from the processes adapted by large companies and experiences of individuals who have succeeded against all odds. We will cover this part in the next article as the idea is to keep each article simple within a limit of about 1000 words.

Regards,

Rajiv Tewari